How to Take Fall Photos

Fall is just about the best season here in Georgia -- it usually lasts quite a few weeks and the colors from the trees are amazing. We are just starting to see reds and oranges (with an abundance of yellow), so now is a great time to snap pictures of your kiddo. Here are a few hints on how I got these great autumn photos.

My little boy loves to "explore" trails and sidewalks around our place. Our deal is that he gets to explore and I get to take photos, plus he'll agree to pose for some of them too. I took these shots around 5:00 p.m. after a drizzly day with overcast skies. Overcast = soft even light for outdoor shots. Perfect.

The first and second image show how tricky trees can be -- you want to capture the fall foliage, but you don't want a branch or tree trunk coming out of your subject's head. I squatted down to take the first shot so I could get the tops of the trees behind his head. The second shot was just positioning. I had to place my boy in a certain spot so that I could get a full body shot with the trees and without head-branches.

The last portrait is one of my favorites from 2008. I try to take photos of my son in each season every year. It is so fun to look back at how he's grown in the past 3 years. This was taken close to the Alpharetta Big Creek Greenway, which turns a gorgeous golden yellow one week out of the year. It is a magical time to take pictures there, and I'm hoping I'll be able to catch it again this year. And that's my last advice of this post: if you see a gorgeous fall setting, get back there with a camera as soon as possible (or better yet, keep your camera with you). A couple days can make a huge difference in whether or not the trees still have their colorful leaves. Happy fall!